Someone's Listening

Starred review from May 4, 2020
Psychologist Faith Finley, the heroine of Glass’s stellar debut, has a happy marriage, a thriving clinical psychology practice near Chicago, and a radio show based on her bestselling book, Starting Over: Life After Abuse. But Faith’s life starts to unravel after a car accident puts her in the hospital and her husband, Liam, goes missing. Then an underage patient of Faith’s accuses her of sexual misconduct, and Faith, formerly a media darling, is excoriated and condemned by the press. Without Liam to rely on, Faith reacts badly and turns to alcohol. As circumstances worsen, she fights back, determined to not only clear her name but also find Liam. Yet every step forward brings two back: the police seem intent on blaming Faith for the accident and have no leads on Liam’s whereabouts, then she finds an envelope with her name on it in her mailbox—inside is a scrap of paper torn from her book, which starts: “Secure your own home.” Intrigue and red herrings abound. Exceptionally well-drawn characters set this above the psychological thriller pack. Readers will eagerly await Glass’s next. Agent: Sharon Bowers, Folio Literary Management.

May 15, 2020
Glass takes some now-familiar conventions from women-in-peril thrillers and gives them a good run in this entertaining mystery. We have a narrator who, if not entirely unreliable, is at least psychologically shaky and drunk quite a bit (The Girl on the Train, The Woman in the Window); a then-and-now jigsaw-puzzle narrative; and even a husband who has vanished?or has he (Gone Girl)?. We start with a golden couple: Faith Finley, an academic, a practicing psychologist, and the host of a popular radio show called Someone's Listening; and her celebrity food-critic husband. After a signing party for husband Liam's latest book, the couple is in a terrible car accident?at least Faith believes they were. There's no trace of Liam. Faith believes he took off, for unknown reasons. The police believe she murdered him, and, even with her shattered nerves, Faith has to find Liam or his murderer to clear herself of the crime?as someone starts stalking her. Nicely creepy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

February 1, 2020

Following the LJ-starred Our House, which was Candlish's U.S. debut, The Other Couple features middle-aged Clare and Jamie and the young couple they befriend, the upwardly aspiring Melia and Kit, until one day Kit vanishes after being seen arguing with Jamie on their regular ferryboat commute. Giller Prize winner Coady's Watching You Without Me opens with Karen back home in Novia Scotia after her mother's unexpected death, tending to her sister full-time and depending on her mother's old caregiver, Trevor, of whom she becomes increasingly suspicious. In JP Delaney's Playing Nice, the Riley and Lambert families are devastated to learn that their two-year-olds were switched at birth--and it gets worse. A prize finalist in Australia, Downes brings us disappointed thespian Emily Proudman, who thinks she's found The Safe Place she needs when she agrees to become housekeeper/nanny at the French estate of the Dennys--but her employers' dark secrets will out. In debuter Glass's Someone's Listening, scandal-ridden psychologist and radio star Faith Finley attends the launch of her new book with her husband, but when her car crashes afterward, the police claim he was not with her (70,000-copy first printing). In Hamilton's The Last Wife, Marie promises to watch over terminally ill friend Nina's family, but after Nina's death she starts uncovering uncomfortable intimations about what happened on a long-ago vacation they took in Ibiza that left Marie's boyfriend dead (200,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). Finally, in Harriet Tyce's The Lies You Told, anxious mom Sadie Roper, newly single and newly reemployed as a barrister, is thrilled to win the attention of Liza, queen-bee mother at her children's school--but at what cost? From the author of Blood Orange; with a 40,000-copy first printing.

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